Lobbying disclosures show historic spending by pubmedia groups
Four minutes after midnight on July 18, the House of Representatives held the final vote to strip public media of federal funding. The vote bookended a months-long campaign by industry leaders to protect CPB and preserve its funding, which included advocacy campaigns, rallies and even in-person meetings with senators.
It also marked a period for the industry of record spending on lobbying.
In fact, nine public media entities, including NPR and PBS, have collectively broken the industry’s quarterly spending record in three out of the last four fiscal years. Employing more than two dozen lobbyists — some former congressional staffers, some direct public media employees — these entities sought to influence policy on a wide variety of topics, from NextGen TV to Ready To Learn to CPB funding.
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